Hi,
I was on H4 visa till Oct 2014. My H1B petiion was approved in October 2014. However, I am on maternity leave from Oct 2014 to March 2015. I did not work for the employer after my visa was approved, hence, do not have any pay stubs. If I want to change my employer now, how do I proceed? H1B transfer requires 2 to 3 pay stubs. Please guide me on the same.
Do you have any paperwork to prove that you are on metarnity leave? If you have genunie paperwork to prove that, USCIS may believe you when you are triggering the H1 transfer. If not, they would suspect your H1 status and possibly consider you out of status from Oct till today.
I initially had a verbal discussion with the employer and told him that I will be on Maternity leave. In January 2015, I did submitted a written application form that I will be on leave from Oct 2014 to March 2015. I have a copy of that leave application form. Please let me know if that will work. Also I have my kid’s DOB certificate to prove the same from maternity perspective.
If your petition/background is not going to raise ANY OTHER suspicious concern, they MAY try to review your application(its YOUR signed application only, can be done at any time). Your Employer also may issue a letter confirming your leave of absence from their records, that would augment the claim. Also keep a copy of your doctor letter confirming your maternity leave.
These are non standard bunch of paperwork, you never know which would help.
Thanks a lot for guiding me on this. My employer is not ready to give me any documents as he thinks I will quit the company after taking those documents. He did not share the original I-797 and copy of I-129 documents also. So, I dont think I will get letter from company confirming my leave claim. I have mail communication with employer, not sure if that will help.
First of all, you need the copy of your I-797 if you want to apply for your H1 under non cap(in your words, H1 transfer). Without that, I dont think your petition would be exempted from CAP.
Second: without your current H1 employer help, you may not be able to get back to your H1 with even a new H1 employer.
From your description, I clearly its my understanding that you have never worked for your original H1 employer(there was no employer-employee relationship), which may drill down to your out of status during your H1 tenure.
Please get an expert review before stepping forward for your next H1 activity.
Hi,
I m on the same situation. I got my h1 approved from October 1, 2014. But delivered my baby on Nov 1st, 2014. Later even in this tough situation, i cleared some project interviews. But my employer kept rejecting the offers saying he is expecting more rates. So I found a new employer and applied for h1 transfer in premium. But today I got RFE asking for a letter from my previous employer saying that I was on maternity leave from Oct 1 till Feb 15th. When I contacted my employer asking for the letter, he said he cannot give any such letter.
Please help. What are my options to respond to RFE. I also have submitted doctor letter along with the initial letter. But still they wanted a leave letter on their letter head.
Plead help…
Recently I heard that there are cases which were approve under non-cap just with the previous approval receipt number. This is not guaranteed. But worth trying if there is no other alternative.
Did your RFE clearly mentioned that you need such letter from your previous employer? I dont think this is legal. Can you give me the ACTUAL TEXT(remove any reference to the personal identity from the text) so that I can get a better idea of what USCIS is exactly asking for.
Thanks a lot for your response.
My lawyer sent me an email saying “Your request should be: I am in need of a letter on company letterhead that will state I was approved to go on maternity leave from October 1st 2014 through a date advised by my doctor.”
I couldn’t get the actual RFE text from the lawyer. But he mentioned to me that USCIS is looking for a vacation letter from my previous employer stating my maternity reasons and he asked me to send an email to my old employer with the above text.
Can we respond to RFE saying that my previous employer is not giving this letter? Or should I file a DOL and then respond to the RFE? . Please advise.